Vezér is not a tool for making visuals on its own, but instead uses powerful envelope tools to let you shape ideas in time. And being as it is focused on time, more connections to sync and audio were understandably a big feature request. Now, Vezér looks like an elegant bridge between music sources and visual apps, ideal for both live visual shows and tightly-orchestrated music videos.

So even though the software is barely more than two months old, the developer says he has spent sleepless nights making that happen. And the results look great. Vezér 1.1 now incorporates MIDI clock sync (check out the demo with Ableton Live), the ability to add your own audio tracks, recording OSC into tracks as well as MIDI, or output MIDI clock, among other improvements.

The Audio Tracks are for more than just playback. You can make keyframes out of the audio file, with or without filtering. And I imagine you could drop audio files in to aid with creating keyframes for audio, useful in scoring visual and audio connections. You can see how that might work in the screenshots below.

Vezér may not be for everyone: it makes the demand on users to think of these sorts of envelope controls in regards to a separate tool. But combining MIDI and OSC controls, able to record both, adding rich tools for designing envelopes, Vezér provides a unique opportunity for those wanting to choreograph their audiovisual ideas.

And visual users are clearly the audience: there are already examples for CoGe, GrandVJ, Modul8, Resolume, and VDMX. (I might try Motion, since it also supports MIDI input.)

I find this app and approach very interesting, though with many of these visual apps capable of receiving midi, when using an IAC bus one can already control visuals via a sequencer. I’m not entirely sure how I might use this (for the record, I am quite noob-ish to the visual side of things) maybe i am missing something here.

Vezér

You are right, but most sequencer apps does not work as a timeline (talking about step sequencers here), and I guess they cannot support custom envelops and OSC. BTW, I’m not sure you are talking about sequencer softwares or hardwares.

Oh yes, I know there a plenty of people out there using Live for sending MIDI to VJ softwares, but for me this task sounds like hunting duck with an RPG (on the pricing side as well). And for example, with artistic installations, there is a big chance you just wanna play back an audio file and timing a vj software.

neb

Having worked with QC and VDMX for some years, I really appreciate the power of an independent tool like this to act as the “glue” of a workflow, synching a disparate body of apps and devices. “MIDI + OSC + event-based-triggering” has been my secret sauce for a while, it’s great to see that distilled into a polished, commercial platform, without track limits.

@Chase ; To a visualist, sequencing visuals with live may be like offering to sequence a [musical] band-mate’s performance from your laptop. How would that impact their creative process, or the expressivity of their performance?

Matt Leaf

I know this is an old post, but I’ve been investigating this software in demo for a while now, to the point I purchased it. It’s still in active development to this day and features keep being added. I have to say it’s fantastic. I have one giant Processing sketch and I can ‘scrub’ through all the different scenes with the mouse, controlling the Playback head in Vezer… Amazing. For all the algorithmic time-based curve functions I could never understand in code, Vezer gives you all that. Really useful software. Of course you could code in some variables you wanted to change from each initialisation, but for things like camera movement and timelining Vezer is priceless…

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